Torsten Bell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 May 2025 · Pensions: Expatriates · Hansard source

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  I recognise the point that the hon. Member is making. I offer a few reflections on that. Some countries already do provide uprating for their pensioners based in the UK, so some of that is already in place, although it does vary across countries. It is, obviously, always for countries to set in place their own social security system. That is why the Australian system, for example, provides means-testing of the state pension, or elements of means-testing of their state pension. I suspect most people—with the possible exception of the Leader of the Opposition on occasion—do not support means-testing of the state pension. I come on to the other point made by the hon. Member in the debate, which was to call for new reciprocal arrangements to put in place more widespread uprating. As I have explained, that would require significant tax rises. There is no way around that. The issue she raised would not negate that effect. It is worth putting ourselves in other’s shoes. Why did the Liberal Democrat Pensions Minister for five years not change the policy on this issue? It was because he recognised the costs involved, and that it would involve tax rises. It is worth us reflecting on why the situation is not as some people would like.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  What is anti-growth is the Conservative party, which sat over 15 long years of decline and completely unprecedented economic stagnation. Our job is to support the hospitality and leisure sector more generally. That is why we are reducing red tape through the cross-Government licensing taskforce; why we are permanently cutting business rates, moving away from the year-by-year chaotic system put in place by the Conservative party; and why we are engaging all the time with the Hospitality Sector Council.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  What the sector is doing is welcoming the trade deals done by the Government yesterday. What it is worried about is a Conservative party that cannot bring itself to welcome a single trade deal with any country around the world. The party of Robert Peel has turned its back on the entire world.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  I completely recognise my hon. Friend’s point. Last autumn, alongside announcing immediate support for retail, hospitality and leisure properties, the Government published a discussion paper setting out our priorities for wider reform, and I know the Exchequer Secretary has met a wide range of businesses on this subject. We are delivering permanently lower business rates for these sectors, and we will announce further policy details at the Budget in the autumn.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  The night-time economy, and the hospitality sector more widely, is the beating heart of our cultural life, bringing to life the places we all call home. That is why this Government have cut draught duty and introduced a fairer, permanent business rates system. We all want our pubs, clubs and restaurants to thrive.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  I have missed out on the particular historical gems that my hon. Friend mentions, but my daughter is a big fan of Southend so obviously I agree with him wholeheartedly. And the Government agree with my hon. Friend, which is why last December we announced the largest round of the community ownership fund, awarding £36 million to 85 projects across the UK. In fact, I agree with my hon. Friend so much that my own office is in the rejuvenated Albert Hall in Swansea, which has had previous incarnations as a cinema, a bingo venue and a music venue—but behaviour in that building is much better these days.

• 20 May 2025 · Night-time Economy · Hansard source

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  I think everybody in this House enjoys the proliferation of microbreweries around the country, which is why the Government are supporting draught beer and cider by knocking 1p off the price of a pint at the Budget last year. It is important not only that we support our pubs, but the brewers who produce the content that is sold in them.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  The decision by the industry, reflecting the question that the Chair of the Select Committee raises about pace of change, is that the targets for asset allocation are for 2030.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  Exactly; that is what is going on. I speak to pension funds every week who say they are looking to increase their allocation of UK assets because political stability has been delivered—because Liz Truss has been exited from this building. I speak to Australian and Canadian pension funds as well who are saying that they want to open an office in the UK because political and economic stability has arrived.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for what I think is his support for the accord—

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for Leeds and for Britain every single week in this Chamber, and everything she said is completely right. The job of the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank is to work with our nations and regions to ensure that projects can be de-risked and supported and that a wide range of private investors can come in behind that and make sure change actually happens, so that this becomes a country that invests in its future once again.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her question. We should focus on the accord today, but the LGPS is a very important part of our pensions landscape; there are £400 billion-worth of assets under management, rising to £1 trillion-worth over the next two decades. It is right that we build on the LGPS track record of local investment to make sure that we get the absolute best value for that investment both for taxpayers in local areas and for local communities. That is exactly what our reforms will do—we will be coming forward with the final details in the pension investment review final report in the coming weeks—to make sure that we have bigger, professional, well-governed and locally investing pension pools.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I hear the point the right hon. Gentleman raises, and we have had those debates in this Chamber in recent months. The UK Government are doing what they need to do to invest in our security and defence and to support our defence industry more generally. We have made it very clear that private investment in those sectors is the right thing to do for our national security and our national economic growth. So far today, there have been calls for mandation and calls to oppose any mandation. There are choices available within pension funds for savers. The vast majority of funds—I think it is 99% within the National Employment Savings Trust, for example—invest in the broad defaults and do invest in the likes of defence companies.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  That is more like it! That is what we want to hear from the Conservatives. The right hon. Gentleman rightly says that progress was made under the previous Administration. I have made that clear, and the Chancellor made that very clear this morning, as I said. I have discussed with many leading members of the pensions industry the fact that we are explicitly building on the progress that the right hon. Gentleman made, rather than throwing any babies out with the bathwater—even after they have had their nappies changed by the previous Lib Dem Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I very grateful to the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) for the tone of his question. He is also right to highlight the lack of UK bias in some of our pension schemes. We see that right across asset classes, and it is not in the interests of the country in the longer term. As he knows, the focus today is on private assets, but we do need to think more broadly. What are we all after? We are after well-functioning capital markets, both public and private, and these reforms will make a big difference in that regard. I am not saying that there is not more to be done; I am sure that there is, and that he will continue to play an active part in those debates.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is completely right, but I would use a slightly more optimistic tone. It is now the settled consensus of the entire defined-contribution industry that this is the direction we need to move in. Almost every single scheme is moving to thinking about how they will invest in a wider range of private assets. Many of them are looking to go further than the benchmark set out in the accord today. They want to do that because it is in their savers’ interests. It diversifies their assets and, over the longer term, leads to higher returns on average. The exact amount of those returns will obviously depend, but studies show that it ranges from 2% to 12% higher returns. It is absolutely in savers’ interests, and I think there is a broad consensus about doing that. My hon. Friend is also right to say that we need to make sure that change happens. We will come forward in the pension schemes Bill with more details about how these developments will be monitored to make sure that change is delivered, because in the end, what the British people want to see is less talking about this and more actual investment.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  He is nodding, so I will take that as support. He will worry that he sounds dangerously like a Liberal Democrat when he sits on the fence as much as he just did. At least the shadow Chancellor has the guts to say he opposes it, because he thinks that that is simple politics to get him through the day. I am glad to see that the hon. Member has not learned enough, and I hope he enjoys the fence sitting while it lasts. The hon. Member is right to say that schemes will want to be transparent about their asset allocation, partly so that savers can see what is going on, but also, to refer back to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson), so that the country as a whole can see that progress is being made.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  Clearly, the hon. Member has not even read the accord. It talks about private assets. [ Interruption. ] No, the accord is about private assets while he mentions public assets. He also adopts the very market fundamentalist view that there is no role for Government at all, which is odd given what I hear him talk about in the Chamber day in, day out. Lastly, he also adopts extreme pessimism about the future of the country. I am much more positive about Britain than he is; that is not surprising, because his job is to pull it apart.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  That was a characteristically punchy and accurate contribution by my hon. Friend, and that is the difference between this Government and some of the Opposition parties: we want to see Britain succeed. We are investing in Britain’s success, and in the long run it will be higher investment, higher growth and higher wages that will turn round the long 15 years of stagnation.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no way that Britain can return to growth unless it starts investing in its future again, rather than living in its past, which is, if we are honest, what we have been doing in recent years. This is part of a much wider story. I hope that there is cross-party consensus—there is certainly consensus across the pensions industry, and among most economists who look at the UK economy—that we need to move to a higher investment level. The finance for that is one thing; some comes from abroad and some comes in domestically, but it also needs to come from our pension schemes. Obviously, it is for the public sector to play its part, but we should be careful in distinguishing this. The Government are doing our bit on public investment levels, with £113 billion extra of public investment compared with the plans inherited from the Conservative Government. That is doing a lot of the work to move us to the higher investment equilibrium, but there are lots of projects, and in the end most investment happens in the private sector. That is where I welcome the progress made by the pensions industry today.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  It is characteristically bold of the Liberal Democrats to cautiously welcome these measures. However, the hon. Member is right to raise the question of Australia and Canada. We look across at places with similar pension schemes to those in the UK, and the levels of private asset allocation in those schemes is far higher than we see here in the UK, so he is absolutely right on that front. On the two specific points the hon. Member raises, I agree on investment in the social rented sector. Many of our pension funds are already doing that, and I know that other major ones will be making announcements in that area in the months ahead. He also raises the breadth of investment opportunity. He is absolutely right that there are large, national-level projects, but there are also many more local projects. Where those are financed by the private sector, pension schemes may want to look at them as well.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I am sure that Ministers in the Department for Transport will have heard my hon. Friend’s words and that his buttering up will have the desired effect over the years to come. He is right to highlight the synergies between public and private investment. We need to see higher levels of public investment, which is why this Government are putting in place £113 billion over these five years. That is being done because it will deliver real, tangible progress that people can see in their streets. Why do people think Britain went backward over the last 15 years? There are lots of reasons, but high up the list is visible potholes on every single road in Britain. We are turning that around as we speak. That wider investment also gives confidence to the private sector, and we see that across the piece—wherever we are delivering regeneration projects with public sector investment supporting them, it crowds in private investment in exactly the way my hon. Friend sets out.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I always enjoy discussing these things with the right hon. Member, as we have done over recent months. He offers a recognition of the challenge facing the country, and in focusing on what we can do to start changing things, he takes a much better position than that adopted by his Front Benchers. I recognise the right hon. Member’s point about risk-aversion. There is a need for more innovation in our pension landscape more generally—that is one of the areas in which I am glad to see progress. I take a slightly more positive view than he does on the consensus that things need to change. We are seeing that in the pensions industry more generally, partly in relation to investing in a wider range of assets, as well as in embracing the agenda that we are setting out for a smaller number of bigger pension funds that are able to take different kinds of risks. The right hon. Member asks specifically about public equities. My view is that the accord from the industry today will support that by funding a pipeline of companies that can grow to the level at which they can list publicly. Also, private assets will include private shares, including the alternative investment market and others. I think the picture is slightly more positive than the one he paints, but I am not hiding from the wider question he raises about capital markets. The UK Government, the Chancellor and my colleague the City Minister are focused on that—he will have heard their words on ISA reform and the rest of it. I look forward to further conversations on that.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, I would like to associate myself with your tribute and those of other Members to Sir Roy Stone, who was a true public servant, and a servant of this House. Pensions matter. They underpin not just the retirement that we all look forward to, but the investment on which our future prosperity depends. This morning, 17 workplace pension scheme providers, between them managing about 90% of active savers’ defined contribution pensions, signed the Mansion House accord. The accord was proposed and developed by the industry, specifically by the Lord Mayor, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and the Association of British Insurers, and builds on the work of the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt), who is in his place. Signatories to the accord have pledged to invest 10% of their main default funds in private assets by 2030. These are productive assets that boost the economy, such as infrastructure. At least 5% will be for UK assets. This investment could support better outcomes for savers and deliver growth finance to Britain’s world-leading science and technology businesses. It could also support clean energy developments across the country, delivering greater energy security and jobs. The shift towards greater investment in private assets is a journey that the sector is already on, because everyone recognises that UK defined contribution schemes stand out relative to their international peers for how little they invest in those areas. This is right for savers because it is in their interests for pension funds to hold a diverse range of assets, and it is in Britain’s interests. This Government want to see higher investment levels in the UK. We cannot continue with the lowest business investment in the G7, as we managed under the previous Administration. Supply of capital is part of that—and today’s agreement is expected to release £25 billion of additional investment into the UK economy by 2030—but so is the supply of projects to invest in: the pipeline. Our job as a Government is to support the depth and visibility of that pipeline, and that is why we are getting this country building once again. The accord is an industry-led agreement—nevertheless, I hugely welcome it. The pensions industry’s decision to invest in more productive assets, from growing companies to infrastructure, will support better outcomes for savers and faster growth for Britain. In the coming weeks, the Government will publish the conclusions of the pensions investment review to support the move to bigger and better pension schemes. We will implement the review’s reforms, and others to improve returns for savers, in the forthcoming pension schemes Bill, which I look forward to presenting to the House.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. It is nice to hear the positivity coming from him and other Members in this House who believe that Britain can do better than the last 15 absolutely terrible years. The investments we will be making, delivering on the supply of capital with the likes of the reforms today, while allowing building for housing, transport projects and the rest, are exactly what will make the difference in the longer term.

• 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend asks a great and important question. We will have more to say on this in the months ahead as we come forward with the final report of the pensions investment review and the pension schemes Bill. Some local government pension schemes have a track record of investing locally, but we need to see that at scale, and we need to see it crowding in private investment, including perhaps from private pension funds. That is exactly what our package of reforms, combined with the industry’s work with the accord today, will help us to deliver. He is absolutely right to push us on that, as I am sure he will continue to do in the months ahead given his record in previous roles. We want higher investment levels, not just in some parts but in all parts of the country.